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Antoine Watteau's The Italian Comedians presents fifteen figures arranged on stone steps and dressed in costumes typical of the commedia dell'arte theater. The Italian comedians were extremely popular performers whose fame rested on the audience's recognition of stock characters. Their plays were often greatly exaggerated by pantomime, gesture, and innuendo. Pierrot, dressed in shimmering white satin, stands in the center of the composition. Pierrot was a naive clown whose declarations of love were rejected by Flaminia, the heroine, placed to his left. Other well–known characters are Scaramouche, dressed in yellow and black, whose sweeping arm gesture presents Pierrot to the audience; on the left are Mezzetin, another clown who flirts with Sylvia, the ingénue, and Harlequin, the adventurer, shown with a black face in his red and green diamond–cut costume.

The garland of flowers in the foreground steps suggests the actors are taking a bow after their performance; however the members united here were probably Watteau's own invention, and connected to a specific play or troupe. This tension between illusion and reality is typical of Watteau and influenced a generation of his followers to explore the relationships between painting and theater.

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Numerous paintings with figures in theatrical costume attest to Jean Antoine Watteau’s interest in the theater. In The Italian Comedians, however — as in others of his works in this genre — the identity of some of the characters remains uncertain or equivocal because he sometimes reused the same model for different figures and modified standard costumes according to his whim. Pierre Rosenberg has drawn attention to the announcement in the Mercure de France of the 1733 print after The Italian Comedians [fig. 1]&nbsp[fig. 1] Bernard Baron after Jean Antoine Watteau, The Italian Comedians, in L'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau (volume II), c. 1740, engraving, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection, 1942.9.2093 by Bernard Baron (1696 – 1762): “These are almost all portraits of men skilled in their art, whom Watteau painted in the different clothing of the actors of the Italian Theatre.”[1]&nbsp[1]Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 442, citing the Mercure de France, March 1733, 554: “Ce sont presque tous portraits de gens habiles dans leur art que Watteau peignit sous les différens habits des acteurs du Théâtre Italien.” It would seem, then, that the painting does not record an actual performance; and we lack evidence as to who these individuals might actually be. It was Baron’s print (included in the Recueil Jullienne, the compendium of prints after Watteau’s work) that gave The Italian Comedians its title.

The scene appears to represent a curtain call of the Comédie Italienne, the French version of the commedia dell’arte, which presented stock characters in predictably humorous plots. A red curtain has been drawn aside from a stage where fifteen figures stand together. At the center is Pierrot, standing resplendent in a white costume and gazing out with an ambiguous expression. He is positioned directly in front of a doorway in the stone wall forming the back of the stage; visible just beyond are trees and sky. The figure raising the curtain at the extreme right has been tentatively identified as Scapin;[2]&nbsp[2]Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 300. the hunched old man at right as Pantaloon or possibly the Doctor;[3]&nbsp[3]Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 515; Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 300. and the figure gesturing to Pierrot as Scaramouche (perhaps Brighella).[4]&nbsp[4]For various identifications of these figures, see Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 335; Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 300; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 510; Gaston Schéfer, “Le portrait dans l’oeuvre de Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 3, 16 (1896): 187. The guitarist is probably Mezzetin, while the flirting figures at the far left may be Mario and Isabella.[5]&nbsp[5]Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 337; Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 301; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 510. See also George T. M. Shackelford, “The Italian Comedians,” in A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (New York, 1994), 210, which corrects the identification of Mezzetin in Grasselli and Rosenberg. The tall woman standing just to the right of Pierrot might be Flaminia, Sylvia, or perhaps “not . . . any particular stock character;”[6]&nbsp[6]See, respectively, Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 335; Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 300; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 516. beside her are an unidentified man and woman. Probably the only figures whose identity is unanimously agreed are Harlequin, recognizable by his mask and diamond-patterned costume, and of course the centrally placed Pierrot.

Pierrot was a fixture in the performances of the Comédie Italienne from the early 1680s until 1697, when the company offended Louis XIV with a play titled La Fausse Prude, thought to be a satire of Madame de Maintenon. The king banished the players from France, an event that Watteau memorialized (though he did not witness it, arriving in Paris three years after the fact) in a lost work, The Departure of the Italian Comedians in 1697 [fig. 2]&nbsp[fig. 2] Louis Jacob after Jean Antoine Watteau, The Departure of the Italian Comedians in 1697, in L'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau (volume II), c. 1740, engraving, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection, 1942.9.2093.[7]&nbsp[7]On The Departure of the Italian Comedians in 1697, see, most recently, Julie Anne Plax, Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth-Century France Cambridge, 2000), 7 – 52. Here, Pierrot in his baggy white costume is seen in supplication. After the king’s death the climate was right for reviving the troupe, which by then was seen as an unfortunate casualty of Madame de Maintenon’s excessive control at Versailles. The regent Philippe d’Orléans arranged with the Prince of Parma, Antonio Farnese, for the return of the comedians in 1716; they performed at the Palais-Royal until the reopening of their old theatre at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.[8]&nbsp[8]Information on the theater comes from Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 301 – 302; Hélène Adhémar and René Huyghe, Watteau: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris, 1950), 100; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 490 – 491. The troupe that was invited back after the nineteen-year hiatus, however, “had nothing in common with the old Comédie-Italienne,” according to François Moureau.[9]&nbsp[9]Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 490. Headed by Luigi Riccoboni, the post - 1716 troupe had eleven roles: two pairs of lovers (Lelio, Mario, Flaminia, and Sylvia); two old men (Pantaloon and the “Doctor”); two schemers (Scaramouche and Scapin); a valet-buffoon (Harlequin); and a singer and a maidservant. Pierrot was introduced as a character from the itinerant Théâtre de la Foire.

On the assumption that The Italian Comedians was an early misnomer that had given rise to a long but erroneous interpretive tradition, Albert Pomme de Mirimonde set forth the hypothesis that the painting might represent a rival company, the Opéra-Comique. Established under that name in 1715, the Opéra-Comique was an itinerant and less formal company that had worked the popular theaters of the fairs around Paris, notably the Foire Saint-Laurent and the Foire Saint-Germain.[10]&nbsp[10]Albert Pomme de Mirimonde, “Les sujets musicaux chez Antoine Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 58 (Nov. 1961): 271 – 274; on the fairs, see Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven and London, 1985), 44 – 53. It seems that some of these characters, notably Pierrot, appeared with some transmutability in the Comédie Italienne, the Opéra-Comique, and other itinerant groups of players who constituted the various fair theaters. Watteau favored the Opéra-Comique over the more official French and Italian comedians. However, under pressure from the French and Italian factions, the regent forced the Opéra-Comique to disband in 1719; some players went to London, where Watteau was then staying. Under this scenario, Watteau painted the work as a final tribute to a moribund troupe, just as Pierrot is shown giving the last farewell. Watteau could not know that the ban was only temporary and that his death would precede the Opéra-Comique’s triumphal reinstatement by a mere three days.[11]&nbsp[11]July 18 and 21, 1721, respectively. See Albert Pomme de Mirimonde, “Les sujets musicaux chez Antoine Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 58 (Nov. 1961): 272 – 274, for the War of the Theatres. Mirimonde suggests that his interpretation avoids two major pitfalls of the more traditional one: Why would Watteau have chosen to celebrate the Italian comedians at a time when members of his preferred Opéra-Comique were visiting, and if he did so, why would he have put at the center of the composition Pierrot, who was the very personification of the Opéra-Comique? Despite their apparently related titles, the painting is not a pendant to The French Comedians of 1720 – 1721 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), which has often been read as a satire of their theater’s more pompous airs.[12]&nbsp[12]See Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 438 – 439. In any case, the dimensions and the relative scale of the figures in these two paintings are different.[13]&nbsp[13]As discussed by Rosenberg in Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 440.

Dora Panofsky proposed that Watteau invests Pierrot “with a prominence and significance not justified by his actual importance on the stage” for the purpose of his “isolation and glorification.”[14]&nbsp[14]Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 331, 337. See Albert Pomme de Mirimonde, “Les sujets musicaux chez Antoine Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 58 (Nov. 1961): 271, on the tradition in eighteenth-century vaudeville of Pierrot, “personnage préféré des spectateurs,” delivering the final couplet. See also Donald Posner, Antoine Watteau (Ithaca, 1984), 265, on this topic, and Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 302, on the consequences for nineteenth-century notions of Pierrot / Gilles of his inflated importance in The Italian Comedians. Indeed, in The Italian Comedians he stands both apart from and above the rest, presiding with apparent irony. Watteau’s strategy of awarding Pierrot an elevated status while underscoring his melancholy detachment has encouraged speculation about the artist’s own identification with this minor character.[15]&nbsp[15]Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 332. Panofsky ventured to link Watteau’s The Italian Comedians with several of Rembrandt’s religious etchings that use similar figural groupings.[16]&nbsp[16]Watteau would have known Rembrandt’s works well, not least because his friend Edme Gersaint, the Parisian art dealer and collector, was a Rembrandt connoisseur who published a catalogue raisonné of his prints. But her bold conclusion — that Scaramouche / Brighella’s gesture is an intentional reference to that of Pilate and that the pure, white-clad Pierrot with a halo-like glow around his head is in turn a secular version of Christ presented to the people — has not found general acceptance.[17]&nbsp[17]Dora Panofsky, “Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 339. Rosenberg, in Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 441, characterized the formal resemblance as “undoubtedly fortuitous”; Donald Posner, Antoine Watteau (Ithaca, 1984), 265, showed that Pierrot’s central, frontal position was not an a priori choice but instead evolved over three preparatory drawings. Pierrot’s costume matches that of his double, the so-called “Gilles” (but now generally recognized as Pierrot)[18]&nbsp[18]Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 433. in the famous painting of that same name in the Musée du Louvre. The identity and significance of the Pierrot figure in these paintings is doubtless the key to their true meaning, but so far it remains elusive.

Eighteenth-century sources refer to The Italian Comedians as one of two works dating from Watteau’s yearlong stay in London shortly before his death. Suffering from tuberculosis, he had come to the city in 1719 to consult Dr. Richard Mead, the celebrated physician, art collector, and Francophile. One of the works that Watteau painted for Dr. Mead was Peaceful Love [fig. 3]&nbsp[fig. 3] Bernard Baron after Jean Antoine Watteau, Peaceful Love, in L'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau (volume II), c. 1740, engraving, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection, 1942.9.2093; the other was “A company of Italian Comedians by the same [artist] and of the same size. Watteau being in England and not in the best of health or financial circumstances, Dr. Mead likely relieved him in both and employed him in painting these two pictures, which are engraved by Baron.”[19]&nbsp[19]Richard Mead, A Catalogue of Pictures Consisting of Portraits, Landscapes, Sea-Pieces, Architecture, Flowers, Fruits, Animals, Histories of the Late Richard Mead M.D., Sold by Auction in March 1754 (London, 1755). However, according to the legend on Baron’s engraving of Peaceful Love, it was the same size as the engraving (33.5 × 40.1 cm), so therefore smaller than The Italian Comedians. George Vertue, writing in 1725, referred to “two pictures painted by . . . Watteaux. Conversations, painted in England,” in George Vertue, “The Notebooks of George Vertue-III,” Walpole Society 22 (1933 – 1934): 23. The announcement for Baron’s engraving indicated that the painting on which it was based was “in the cabinet of Mr. Mead, physician to the king of Great Britain. He commissioned it from Watteau during the latter’s sojourn in London.”[20]&nbsp[20]Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 440, citing the Mercure de France, March 1733, 554, “dans le Cabinet de M. Mead, Medecin du Roy de la Grande – Bretagne. Il le fit faire à Watteau dans le voyage qu’il fit à Londres.”

Craig Hanson has proposed that The Italian Comedians alludes to a pamphlet war in London in 1718 and 1719 between Mead and his supporters and Dr. John Woodward concerning in particular their respective treatments for smallpox.[21]&nbsp[21]Craig Hanson, “Dr. Richard Mead and Watteau’s ‘Comédiens Italiens,’” Burlington Magazine 145 (Apr. 2003): 265 – 272. In this reading, the hunched and wizened Doctor at the right of the composition stands in for Woodward, whose quackish notions have been exposed by the character of Pierrot and are ridiculed in a dialogue between Scaramouche and Harlequin in a satirical stage production.[22]&nbsp[22]Harlequin-Hydrapses: Or the Greshamite, A Mock Opera, performed at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1719. Ingenious as this reading may be, we are not persuaded that the evidence is sufficient to identify Scaramouche, Harlequin, and Pierrot (a surrogate for Mead?) as representing the triumphant triumvirate of the Mead camp versus the embittered Doctor “Woodward,” cringing at stage left. Watteau’s The Italian Comedians still keeps its secret.

Did Watteau paint the National Gallery’s picture?[23]&nbsp[23]For a long time no other full-size version of the painting was known. In 1890 the so-called Groult version appeared and was enthusiastically hailed as the original: “incomparably brilliant, executed with superb assurance” (Virgile Josz, Watteau: moeurs du XVIIIe siècle, 2nd ed. [Paris, 1903], 430); “a Watteau of premier importance” (Paul Mantz, “Watteau, VI,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 3, 3 [1890]: 225). The bibliography in Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 443, lists separately the references to the Groult copy, all of which transfer to it the early history of the National Gallery’s painting. The painting that Georges Wildenstein presented as the Groult version to the National Gallery in 1960 does not merit such praise and can only be a copy; see The Italian Comedians (copy). Correspondence in the NGA curatorial files suggests that the Groult painting may still be at large. Other related works include a reduced version once reported in the collection of Ries and a tapestry in the Lehmann collection (Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian [Oxford, 1977], 301, and Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 [Washington, DC, 1984], 443). We believe he did, but this authorship has been questioned. For example, Colin Eisler speculated that it might be a work completed by the artist Philippe Mercier or else “an excellent, very early copy.”[24]&nbsp[24]Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 303. Donald Posner wrote categorically, “The original painting has unfortunately disappeared, but a fine old copy in the National Gallery in Washington is some compensation for the loss.”[25]&nbsp[25]Donald Posner, Antoine Watteau (Ithaca, 1984), 263. Baron’s engraving is faithful in composition, although in places the print is worked out in more detail, as Eisler has noted.[26]&nbsp[26]Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 303. In many respects it is more generously proportioned: from the roundness of the jester / puppeteer’s head and features to the thickness of the Doctor’s walking stick or the guitarist’s fingers. Details such as hands are more exactly rendered in the print, while the sleeve of Harlequin’s raised arm has a scintillating, crinkled texture somewhat lacking in the painting. The roses in the print appear more luxuriant. Other differences in the print are the vertical foliage in Flaminia’s bodice and the straight-falling bangs of the child in the corner. But these differences may be ascribed to the engraver’s personal style and / or to later losses to the original painting. The dimensions noted by Baron are slightly larger than the present painting, but the canvas may have been trimmed.[27]&nbsp[27]Rosenberg, in Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684 – 1721 (Washington, DC, 1984), 443, suggests that Baron made a measurement error.

The painting may have been in better condition when Gustav Friedrich Waagen described it in 1857 as “of such vivacity in the heads, clearness of colouring, and carefulness of execution, that I do not hesitate to pronounce it one of the most remarkable works of the master I know.”[28]&nbsp[28]Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, vol. 4 and supplement to Treasures of Art in Great Britain (London, 1857), 96 – 97. The work we see today is somewhat marred by losses, abrasion, and flattened impasto, perhaps due to previous restorations. Once the discolored varnish and overpaint were removed in 1984, an extensive bright red underdrawing typical of Watteau emerged, applied with a brush. Moreover, the original technique was consistent with Watteau’s reputation as a technically sloppy artist: brush hairs were found in the paint, and it appeared that some colors had run together on his disorderly palette (see [fig. 4]&nbsp[fig. 4] Cleaned state, before restoration, Antoine Watteau, The Italian Comedians, probably 1720, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1946.7.9, the stripped-down canvas before inpainting).[29]&nbsp[29]See the